Breaking Point
by Kaira Sakamoto
Summary: Various Drabbles for TWD with various characters, but mostly focused on Carol and/or Daryl and their pairing, Caryl. Rated for later pieces. Maybe contain AU drabbles but will be labeled if so. 17th Drabble: Wordless.
1. Retribution

_The pickaxe is heavy._

Gripped with white knuckles and trembling arms, it's lowered with hesitance - once; twice - and is followed by the choked sounds of sniffles being held back. It's lifted, over a shoulder; the world tilting precariously; swinging.

Its dull points meet flesh, bone, further staining its metal with red and black. In this moment, it has stopped being a weapon to end the life of Walkers before they begin; instead, in these hands, it has become a weapon of retribution; a tool to let loose the agony of its user. Memories are channeled into its wooden handle, thrumming through its head as it is brought down again and again. Words, fists; bruises, cries, split lips; sadness and tears; and then, fear. So much fear.

As minutes pass, it gets lighter, easier to wield, as it transforms: a sharp silver sword, glowing with the sunlight; something to prevent a monster from rising again to torment those within its reach. The strikes no longer end with a thunk but sing through the air with the call of release and relief and freedom, the blood on its head like holy water -

And then, it ends, and is passed back to where it began. The hands are rough with use; the grip comfortable; the arms steady against its weight.

The pickaxe is nothing, now, in these hands.

Heavy and silent, it mourns.


	2. Still

She struggles not to close her eyes, at first, because even she knows that it's a bad idea. No matter how tired she is, how much her neck bled and her body hurt, she knows that to sleep would mean to die. So she doesn't, but it's hard. So hard.

It doesn't help that she can hear the growling, ravaged voice at the back of her mind; can see, beyond the darkness of her closed eyelids, the dead glow of hunger staring at her as it gnaws on the lights in her brain.

She pictures the video Jenner had showed them. The way each sparking thread flickered and died; how it spread like water - so fluid - until all of the lights were gone. Swallowed. Devastated.

When those lights are gone, she knows that the monster growing inside would spread it's own weak lights, like thin, spider-like fingers. Fingers with chipped nails, clawing its way forward into the darkness.

Fear clogs her throat in a way her Daddy never caused. Would she still be awake while it walks in her body, she wonders, stumbling through the still forest on trembling legs. Her head is light, and she is growing dizzier with each step she takes.

She wants her mother more than ever, now. She wants her fingers to run through her hair, her cheek to rub at her temple, her mother's heart in her ears as she holds her close. But the woman isn't here. _She isn't here._

Sophia is alone, and she hates it.


	3. Silence

There are no words, sometimes, for when they're together. There doesn't always need to be. He will be getting up in the early winter morning to take watch, the sun not even peeking above the horizon yet, and she will be there, bundled in what little blankets they had, already waiting for him.

Their breath would be fogging the air, and his eyes on her back would eventually draw her attention. She'd turn - slowly and unafraid - and smile at him; that gentle spread of her lips and brightening of her eyes that was so subtle that one could walk right by it if too quick to turn away.

He never is; quick to turn away, that is. Not anymore. You watch until you know for sure what you're reading in someone, he's learned. So when that smile first begins, his eyes are locked on her face until it's completed, and there's that annoying little tingle and the oddest race of his heart when she holds his eyes. He ignores it, for now; something to deal with later when even she's not here in the quiet.

It's only when the smile fades that he takes those next few steps to sit beside her in the cold and looks away to gaze out into the darkness. The silence is comforting, he finds.

And when she scoots a little closer, so close his skin starts to tingle in awareness, he tells himself that it's because it's only cold, and he's always like a goddamned furnace. He's not ready for any other answer yet, doesn't know when he ever will be, but this closeness is -

-it's just right. And it's just enough to stay.


	4. Changed

"The hell is that?" he asks her that morning, watching her slip the thin length of fabric from her small pack. He leans against the door of the cell she and Lori share, snacking on a small packet of food she'd given him during watch.

She looks down at the scarf in her hands, at it's pretty pattern and colors, a minute smile tilting on corner of her mouth. "It's nothing," she answers, strangely embarrassed. Her cheeks don't heat, but she feels an echo of the blush brewing under her skin. "Just something I found awhile back, during winter."

His eyes flick to her face, watching intently. He may not say much in the way of words, but his eyes are expressive in the way they squint at her sometimes. It's his thinking face, and that coupled with the way he's starting to chew at his thumb means he's thinking about something he'd rather not have at the front of his mind.

"'S nice," is all he says.

She pauses in her folding, meaning to put it back in the pack now that her other things are put away; meets his eyes before they flick away again. Her gaze falls back down to the scarf, and she remembers a conversation, way back when the group was still getting used to one another, scavenging in the trunks of cars on the highway. Before the farm. Before the loss of her daughter. She'd taken a simple red top, held it to her body and had admired it. She remembers Lori staring at her in disbelief, silently questioning her priorities on something so frivolous.

_Ed never let me have nice things_, she'd told other woman in quiet defense. She'd felt a deep flash of shame because it was just another indication of how he'd controlled her life.

But now she smiles again, shaking the fabric out before lifting her arms with it in her hands. As Daryl watches, still gnawing at his thumb, her fingers deftly wrap it around her head in a makeshift turban. When she's done, she skims the pads of her fingertips along it's edge across her forehead. "You're right," she says, moving around him. "It is nice." She gently touches his bare arm, and it says so much on how far he's come that he only tenses for a split second. "Thank you for noticing."

He stops biting, holding her eyes. "'S'nothing." The man looks away, adjusting his crossbow across his back. "We'd better head out there, Rick 'n T-Dog are already settin' things up." One calloused hand reaches up and squeezes hers, letting go after a moment. "C'mon."

Carol grins at him as he leads the way out, keeping up with him in long strides; footsteps quiet compared to the clomping of his boots on the concrete. She's so proud of him, she thinks. He opens the door first, letting her through before closing it behind them with a sliding klang. _She's so proud of the both of them._


	5. Care

"Mr. Dixon?"

He glanced over into the face of the little blonde girl, wide blue eyes and freckles made stronger by the light of the sun. She'd sat down a little ways away from his own seat on the ground, legs crossed under her. It wasn't unusual, her being there; she'd taken to watching him after Merle'd gone to Atlanta with a part of the group, and as long as she didn't bug the fuck out of him (besides those first days where her curious gaze'd make him nervous, which would then make him irritated), he'd let her stay there for as long as she wanted. Or as long as her father never noticed.

This day, however, was the first that she'd spoken to him. In fact, she spoke less than her mother in general, and that woman barely said a thing except to apologize for her dickwad of a husband.

Daryl paused at cleaning his crossbow, chewing on his thumbnail instead and looking at her from the corner of his eyes. "What d'ya want, girl?"

"Why do you use that instead of a gun?"

"What kind of weapon I use ain't none of your business," he told her, waving a bolt whose point he'd been checking in her direction. She frowned, squinting up at him, obviously waiting. "Shit." He wasn't good with talking. "Use it 'cause it's quieter. Shoot a gun 'n any walker within hearing distance'll come."

"Why?" Her skinny legs folded up, equally thin arms wrapping around them.

"Dunno why," he grunted, lifting the bolt into the light, running a finger along its feathers. "'Spose they're just stupid. Ain't like animals: they run from sounds like that."

The girl was silent for a long moment, her head turning closer to camp where the both of them could see her mother cooking something at the fire. Her asshole of a husband was in his tent - doing nothing, like always - so when the other women joined the girl's mother, a small smile came to her lips. Her smile looked pathetically weak compared to the all-teeth and crinkled eyes of the others sitting with her, but even a man like himself could see something in it.

He shook his head, turned his head back at the woman's daughter. Huh, he thought. They had the same smile.

"Are they hard to kill, Mr. Dixon?" the girl spoke up again, resting her cheek against her knees, eyes not leaving her mother in camp. Daryl figured that the two were rarely more than a few feet away from one another, the girl always protected as best as her mother was capable.

"Nah." He slipped the bolt back in its rightful place on the crossbow. "Just gotta know where to aim at." Tapping his temple with an index finger, he met her eyes. "Gotta get the brain. Only way to stop 'em. For you, though," he said. "Best thing to do is run. Not nearly strong enough to take 'em down by yourself."

There was a long moment where the kid just nodded, where the only sounds between them were those from the camp. He'd just gone back to cleaning his weapon when he saw the girl scoot a little bit closer on her butt. She'd gone back to staring at him, and he tried not to twitch and fidget. Little girls aren't supposed to make a grown man nervous, and he could practically hear Merle laughing at him in his head.

"Momma's done it before," she said, and he lifted his head, grateful for the distraction, to once again watch the woman at the camp, letting her daughter's words hit him. "Ms. Wynn, she tried to get us. Momma hit her with the car." Her eyes were wide when he looked at her, locked on her mother.

What was he supposed to say to that? That woman had done what she had to, that was obvious even to him. He may not have had a mother like this little girl did but it was the right reaction, the instinct to care and protect. He'd seen it in animals. Sometimes, he'd seen it in people, too; those few families walking together on the streets. Daryl wondered where that piece of shit father had been during all this, but he didn't speak up and ask.

This whole conversation wasn't any of his business, really, and he made that clear in the way he ignored the now silent girl. He went back to restlessly wiping every speck of dirt from his weapon, just to keep his hands busy. He didn't want to think about mothers and scared children and shit fathers. And, for awhile, it worked; his mind went blank, the sounds from the rest of camp fading quite a bit but never completely. That is, until the girl jumped to her feet to get to her mother, who was handing out food for an early dinner.

As he watched, the woman smiled; tiny but sincere, gently running one finger down the length of her daughter's nose to tap the tip. The kid visibly brightened along with her mother, and even loomed over by the shadow of their abuser, they still found it in them to show they care. Still a slice of family, surviving like they do.

He quickly turned his head away when, after the girl whispered in her Momma's ear, the woman glanced his way. He wasn't fast enough, though, and their eyes met; frustrated, Daryl bit at his thumb, welcoming the sting of it's skin between his teeth. It wasn't long before he heard her footsteps - quiet, like he expected of her for the life she was living - coming to him. He thought, for a moment, that she'd speak to him while she stood there; from the corner of his eye, he could see her thin hands twisting a bowl of something, but he quickly dropped his gaze once more when she reached out with careful movements. His body tensed, the grip on his crossbow tightening -

But she only set the bowl beside him, along with a bottle of water she must've held under her arm, and walked away, back to the camp and her daughter.

Silence reigned over him, then; his thoughts quiet; settled; shocked, as he stared after her. It look a long moment for him to get his body moving, for his mind to catch up, but when they connected they worked in unison to lift the bowl of - something with mushrooms, and what tasted like beef broth. Whatever it was, it was good, he thought, and his gaze drew back to the others. The girl was leaning against her mother, who was running her free hand through the little blonde's hair and pressing her cheek to the top of her head.

Daryl spooned another bite of mushroom into his mouth, staring down at his dirty boots.

He didn't even know their names.


	6. God

She doesn't know when she'd stopped believing in Him - truly stopped, even in the back of her mind, the beat of her breast. Was it when her daughter was gone, when Daryl came back, time and again, without her on his back, bringing her to safety? Or was it when the barn was opened, pouring out monsters and the truth of her daughter's fate? Maybe during the winter, as they grew hungrier and thinner, frantically running from point to point? She likes to think that she still believed in His plans even then, in the path He guided those here on Earth.

After all, she had believed her daughter was safe with Him. Safe and with those this little group had already lost; her little girl now unafraid and still so beautiful.

But when T-Dog speaks of trusting the Lord to guide his steps, to lead them both to safety within this concrete maze - to help lead her, she realizes just how much faith she's lost in Him. Realizes, with a jolt, just how this life has scarred her, more than her husband ever did. It concerns her, twists her gut, forces bile to the back of her throat and tears in her eyes.

And when her friend is ripped apart with her very eyes, still screaming at her to run, run, run to freedom and safety and don't look back. Just go -

She finds herself praying as her steps speed across concrete, as she runs, as she flies, and even as she travels back with the too faint hope that maybe the Lord has answered T-dog despite the evidence against it. He isn't all right, though, and they are feeding. One lunges for her, and she drops her weapon, her scarf pulled from her head as she flees once again.

When she has found a safe place to hide, curled and crying, her breathing shallow with fear and desperation, she folds her hands, bending her head over them, and prays. Prays that she will be found, and in time. She prays that the others are safe.

She prays, most of all, that what she wishes for is actually heard.


	7. Falter

Carol laughed at him when the subject came up the first time. The world is caught in a layer of frost outside, and the group is sheltered in one of the few homes not overrun and able to keep its warmth. The rest of the group is asleep in the rooms upstairs while the two of them take the couch and the floor with their own few blankets.

She's folding her few clean clothes away in that little habit of hers, her thin hands smoothing out what wrinkles will be settled. There's dirt and dust under her fingernails, even after all the time she'd spent absently scraping it away during their last meal. There's also a tiny cut on the top of her right hand; a scrape gained from their last retreat that he wishes he could cover with a band-aid.

"I'm tellin' you, I ain't good with any kids," he gripes on the floor, stretching out with the extra pillow she'd found for him in the attic. A grunt escapes him when his back cracks loudly and relief buzzes up his spine.

"Since when have you gotten close enough to try?" She smiles at him from above. Curled around her long pillow, her face is slightly shadowed from this angle, the blue of her eyes dark but open in her expression.

He squints up at her, blinking slowly as tiredness seeps into his skin and puts weights on his eyelids. "Haven't," he concedes. "But when it comes, I ain't touchin' it." The man tries to sound resolute, but when Carol only laughs again, obviously not believing him, he can't keep his lips from twitching. He bites at his thumb, worrying at the skin of it before abruptly turning his back her her and clenching his eyes shut. "All right, all right, stop your laughin'. Get some fucking sleep."

When all goes quiet except for their breathing in the tiny living room, he relaxes into the blankets, body long used to nights on hard surfaces and quickly beginning to fall into slumber, and that's when he feels her gentle fingers brushing only once through his hair. He's in that place of - dare he even think it - contentment when her words drift softly to his ears.

"You'll love that baby," her words are firm, as if there would never be a doubt, and Daryl doesn't know if she think he's still sleep or not. He files what her words do to him into the folder titled with her name. "And you'll do your best for it because that's how good you are inside. You won't hesitate."

She's so tiny in his arms, now. A squirmy little bundle of warmth and chubby limbs and squinting, closed eyes. Dark hair already on her head, and her skin so perfect and smooth. Covered in dust and dirt, he is afraid of staining her skin in the way everyone else sheltered here is.

But when she's cuddled close to the leather of his vest and her little lips are wrapped and suckling at the bottle's nipple, he doesn't find it in himself to give a damn. All he can do is let his lips tilt up, a chuckle gather in his throat, his eyes to soften. He teases her in a voice that he'd never in his goddamned life thought he'd make, calls her ass-kicker and goes silent when those he misses are mentioned. They're all dirty and greasy and smell pretty fucking rank, and in time this little one'll be just as smudged but she'll survive one day at a time.

None of them'll have it otherwise, he knows. They all love this kid, all care for it, and if she's a little dirty in the meantime, with a little bit of dust on her cheek but otherwise spotless, then so be it. He certainly won't let that get in the way of things.

And it turns out that Carol was right after all. He didn't falter, not even once.


	8. Sweet

Her voice is all teasing, those big blues of hers crinkled with her closed-lipped smile at his disbelief. "Yes, Daryl, my hair wasn't always this short," she tells him with a light laugh, running her fingers through her hair, ruffling the softly cut locks, the curls that are just coming in.

Daryl glances at her from the corner of his eye once before bringing his gaze back to where he was sharpening sticks for arrows. He said nothing, knowing that her pensive expression meant she wasn't done talking. The world outside is grey and dismal, everyone further inside the house, leaving them to this little corner. He prefers it this way, especially with all the two of them ended up speaking about. It's one of those nights where the peace between them draws their voices into the open, their memories branching to subjects that were once hidden. He doesn't mind it as much as he did in the beginning of this - whatever this was. This thing, he finds, is like the opening of an infected wound, or the rebreaking of a bone set wrong; painful, but a way to make the injury as it should have been, to fix it better than it had before.

"It wasn't always grey, either," she adds after a moment, and he grunts, looking back up again, watching the way she stares off. "Stress," she explains. "Ed, mostly. What he did, how he looked at Sophia. And Sophia wasn't an easy pregnancy, either, so that was..." Her eyes grew hooded, her hands wringing together. "It used to be auburn. I loved it." Her previously gentle smile came again, tainted by her current grimace. "You never realize how free it is, having something like that, until you have no choice but to get rid of it."

He's silent, eyes flicking to her face as the contentment between them grew tense. He knows that she's not talking about her hair anymore, and he wonders exactly what else she's had to get rid of because of her husband; what else he'd forced her to leave behind; what else he'd forced her to throw away like trash. He takes one more swipe at the makeshift arrow, checking the point with his index finger against the tip.

"Could always get a wig," he says eventually, and her eyes, startled, meet his. That wide gaze held shadows in them, but then she grins; it's a shaky, trembling little smile, but it's there, and it settles the tightening of his muscles; the tense posture he'd ended up sitting in; the stiff shoulders.

"I doubt they'd have wigs at the local store, Daryl," she answers.

"Too cold to go out, anyway." He squints out the nearby window, partially boarded up; glared disdainfully at the bare trees.

The woman's grin spreads, and she covers it with one delicate hand, leaning forward as if that would prevent the gentle laughter that shake her shoulders. "You worry so much about the cold when you barely wear sleeves."

He huffs, the corner of his mouth twitching in a semblance of the smile she now sports. It leaves him soon after as he stares at the bare tree limbs outside. He doesn't tell her that it was cold the days he was lost as a child, wandering and wiping his ass with poison oak. That he'd shivered near constantly, barely able to keep warm as he struggled to find his way home alone. That even when he came home to no one caring, no one noticing he was even gone, he'd still felt cold deep down in a way he'd never had before then.

Daryl wonders what she'd say, what she'd do if he told her these things. Would she understand? This thin woman seemed like she would; she'd understood just about everything else he'd said no matter how small or seemingly unimportant. Figured that it'd take someone as fucked up as he was to get the way he worked. She'd never pressured when he clammed up; even when he pushed her in return, grew angry and frustrated with her silence, with the way those eyes of hers would unerringly hold his gaze.

She wouldn't judge him, but just knowing that isn't enough to undo the years he'd spent keeping his mouth shut against weakness like this.

He watches her with squinted eyes as her soft laughter dies down; absorbs the way her face relaxes into - into an expression that he could only describe as sweet. She's not looking at him, and he's glad. He's not ready to tell her a lot of things and the way she'd gaze at him would make him blurt out the things he wants to keep close the most right now.

He picks up another stick, starts whittling away one edge into a point again. Not today, he thinks. But, maybe one day.


	9. Alive

She asks to see her grave three days later. Well, she asks to see T-Dog's grave. Her voice is cracked and dry when she eventually speaks; weak, barely even a whisper against his ear when leaning close.

He refuses, of course. She ain't got no business seeing it as she was still breathing, still herself, and most of all still recovering. He didn't even want to go near it himself, even from a distance. The small speck of white from the Cherokee rose he'd set for her; the three bare-boned crosses in a row. Daryl couldn't bring himself to step within three yards of the graves after he'd said a goodbye that meant nothing in the end.

But Carol had a way of getting him to do things he didn't normally want to. Like giving a shit about things he'd normally ignore. Like touching, or simply absorbing the gentle hand she sometimes laid on his shoulder or arm. Or letting the way she sometimes watched him just wash over him like water. So even though he'd refused, he couldn't find it in himself to do so again when she asked in that same breathy tone, with the barely-there brush of her fingertips against his hand. It was nothing at all, after that, to scoop her up and gently carry her off.

She's curled into him, now; as she had before, she has one arm around his shoulders and neck, and the way she is shaking as he carries her is a relief compared to how still and limp she'd been. The position, he finds, is natural to him; like his cradling of the little one, he hadn't hesitated to pick her up.

In the sun, she looks only slightly better than back inside the grey walls of the prison. Her skin is still pale, dehydration having sapped the color from her, and her eyes keep closed against the light. Her lips are chapped to hell, he notes.

He stops a few feet away from the crosses, uneasy as his gaze falls to the single flower on her grave. His legs are already kneeling when she wiggles slightly in his arms, and he sets her beside the cross bearing the tie only they would know. She touches the cross next to hers, fingers tracing the small engraving there.

"He saved me," Daryl hears her whisper as he lowers himself to the ground, his eyes flicking to her lips to read them. She so silent it's like she's talking only to herself. "T-Dog led me through the prison. He distracted the walkers so I could get away."

_The man had been a good one. _His head tilts down to her lap where her hands wring at themselves, a nervous gesture that makes him look away. He remembers the conviction in T-Dog's eyes way back at the Atlanta camp, the way he hadn't turned away from his anger when speaking of Merle. The way he'd owned up to his mistake, his fumble with the fucking key.

And the morning that everything went to shit, how he'd defended the prisoners. A dozen little moments that he'd used to prove himself to be - to _still_ be more than what this hell had made them. Up until the end.

His attention is brought back to Carol when she makes a low sound from her throat, a groan that covers the sob he can tell she wants to let out. She's still exhausted, her body still so vulnerable and weak that tears can barely form. He hates that moan, something so easily mistaken for a walker, and he can't wait for the moment when that sound is gone from her voice, when he'll never hear it again. It reminds him of how he'd almost left her in that little room, struggling to get out, struggling to push that door open, over and over -

But that noise she's making isn't going away; in fact it's worse, and it's making him edgy; nervous; unsure. He doesn't know why she's doing it; if she's mourning T-Dog and Lori, herself, or if it's just a release at being alive. It's a cold weight in his gut at the thought of her having resigned herself to die.

She hadn't, though; her repeatedly pushing at that door proved it. That was the main thing. And she was alive. She'd kept fighting, had taken down walkers, hidden, and then - he'd found her. He'd found her.

And if she needs this, to make this deathly choked groan, he wasn't going to leave her out of his sight no matter how much it bothered him or brought up things he'd rather not think of.

It's a long time before it stops, however. It fades into a shuffling coming from her direction, and Daryl glances up to see her reaching to her grave. Her fingers touch the flower, slightly withered at the edges from exposure away from it's hedge and roots. She traced the petals much like she did so long ago at the farm, and he is -

- brought back to that time, where looking for a little girl would prove that he was better than he'd been taught, where comforting her mother was just as important as looking for the daughter, and where the Rose was not a piece to place at a grave marker, but a symbol of hope blooming from tears and prayers.

He finds himself chewing at his thumb, watching her carefully as her lips twitch, as if unsure if she should smile or frown.

"You thought I was dead," she finally murmurs, barely lifting her head.

His eyes flick to her face and away, not wanting to see the watery gaze she'd pinned on him. He feels it, though, itching at his skin. Don't ask about it, he wants to say. Don't ask why he gave up. Why he was fucking stupid to. Why he assumed the worst.

She doesn't say anything else, though, for a long time. Just kept on trailing her fingers along the flower, over the pattern of it's inner colors. His gaze is drawn to her, her lack of expression, her trembling hands. The way the sun hits her skin and outlines the frailty that hung over her tired frame.

He'd almost lost this woman, he thinks. If he'd been any longer she'd have been dead, and he would have had to kill her again. He struggles not to think on it, willing the image of her with vacant, dead eyes to go the fuck away.

"It's funny," she whispers as Daryl moves closer, settling less than half a foot from her, "I thought for awhile that I was going to die in there, in that tiny closet. And that of course it would have been in such a small space." She gazes up at the clear sky, and her eyes are brighter with the sunlight. "I'm glad that I didn't. I'm glad you found me."

He doesn't say anything, only letting her soak up the warmth the outside brings. Instead he gently reaches to her face, brushes his fingers against her chin in a repeat of that day. It's enough, he thinks, when he sees the way her expression softens, when he feels one of her hands touch his. It's enough to let her know, in this tiny gesture, that he is glad, too.


	10. Scars

He's got a shitload of scars, he'd told her once, on another night spent huddled in the living room together.

They and the group had found a few bottles of liquor left behind, and he'd convinced her through not-so-subtle prodding to drink a hefty amount of it despite her protests. It'd left a nauseating yet pleasing buzz in the pit of her stomach, coupled with a lightheaded glaze to her thoughts. She'd remembered, between one gulp and the next, why she'd initially refused to drink her entire life, but the way he'd poked fun at Glenn, nudged an elbow at T-Dog and even chuckled at a poorly told joke by Rick, had lowered her automatic unease. As she watched, the tenseness of his shoulders had relaxed the slightest bit, and his face seemed to frown less and less the more he drank.

When the others had finally gone to bed (Glenn groaning while Rick and T-Dog helped him up the stairs), the two of them had stumbled (well, she had stumbled) to the couch, wrapping up in whatever blankets and extra clothes they could find in their packs. They'd been silent for a long while, staring at everything but each other, before he'd spoken up about the scars.

"I've got one from when I got bit from a dog, once," he'd said with a twitch of his mouth. His words were more accented, the drawl just a little more pronounced than normal, and she'd found herself leaning in at the same time he did.

"Bit by a dog?" she'd asked, horrified.

"It was a tiny one. 'N old." He'd lifted one pant leg to his knee, showed the marks on his ankle to her as he explained, "It was when Merle and I were kids. He kept on pokin' it with a stick and it kept on getting angrier and angrier, tryin' to get at us. Merle was laughin' when the chain keepin' it back snapped, and next thing I know it's got a hold of my leg and was slobbering all over it. Hurt like hell but it only had a few teeth left, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been." And then he'd chuckled, just a little under his breath, as if the experience hadn't been one that should have been terrifying to a child. "First time Merle freaked out about me gettin' hurt."

It'd unsettled her, the unperturbed way he'd gone on about this, but when he'd squinted up at her with a gaze only partially guarded at her silence, she'd forced her worries away. They could be dealt with when the night was over, when the alcohol was gone from their systems and the next night had come again.

He'd gone on to tell her about a few more; the one further up his knee from when he'd fallen from a tree; one at the top of his head, covered by his hair, from when he'd had a bottle chucked at his head ("Some fucking dumbass wasn't paying attention," he'd said.) The stories paired up with each scar he'd shown her had seemed...typical.

It wasn't until the night had grown darker, when all sounds above them on the second floor had ceased, that he'd seemed to sober up. He'd refused to look at her when before he'd been unable to look away, and the change had made her scoot closer. He had become tense, pensive, his teeth gnawing away at his thumbs in that habit that told her he was thinking.

And the way he kept on squinting over at her told her that he was thinking something involving her. So when he'd untangled from the blankets and started to unbutton his shirt in swift, surprisingly nimble movements, she'd startled, leaning away with wide eyes. "Daryl," she began.

He'd tossed the shirt over the back of the couch, sitting there bare-chested for a long moment, not looking at her for even longer. His fists were clenching and relaxing in hard motions, and he'd begun to breathe hard, as if fighting the urge to do anything but this.

Finally, he pointed to an angry red line across his stomach. "A belt," he said, voice soft, and her fears died in her breast, her heart dropping to the floor. Her eyes roved over his skin, the marks left behind. She'd seen a glimpse of them what seemed so long ago at the farm, but he'd been so quick to cover them that she hadn't even taken the time to study them.

He pointed to his chest, across his heart, over his shoulder and back, to his side. A knife, cigarette butts, fingernails, more leather belts. Each scar indicated looked worse than the others, time told by the shade of red or white each one was.

Carol's hands shook, and her throat was clogged with the effort to hold back her tears by the time he'd stopped; staring at her with silent, squinted eyes and a solemn face, he'd simply left his hands in his lap, waiting for her to get a better hold on herself. Her hands were still trembling when he'd lifted one hand to his side, where a rough circular scar was, this one obviously newer than all the others.

"Got this one by the arrow at the river," he said. His other hand went to his temple, tracing the skin there even though she couldn't see any scar. It must have been faint, one that she would have had to get up close to see. "And this one, the same day."

She remembers the bandage wrapped around his head; remembers pressing her lips gently to the covered stitches, the way he'd stared at her like she'd been about to eat him; how he'd huffed at her in an obvious cover, brushing her actions off.

"I hate all the others, the way I got 'em," he said when her eyes had focused. He refused to look at her, instead chewing at his thumb and staring at the boarded windows. She shivered, huddling deeper into her blankets. "But these two - they're the only ones I'm proud of. The only ones that mean a damn to me." His eyes flicked to hers, held them. "I don't regret tryin', and they're my proof of that."


	11. It Sneaks Up

It's not really the first time it's happened, but it's the first time he's been smacked across the face with it; aka, the first time it's happened to _him_. He'd heard of the awkwardness afterwards; the way their eyes wouldn't meet for days, the semi-avoidance, the nervous brush-offs -

But Daryl never thought he'd be so - so bothered by it, himself. And he knew, on some level, that thinking that was pretty fucking stupid of him.

Maybe it's because seeing the smooth lines of her back, the slightly jutting bones, the gentle slopes of her shoulders that just _did it_ for him. Not because he hadn't seen - or touched - a woman before, because he had, all in meaningless times that he never bothered to remember past the night; but because it was _her_, and that made all the difference.

Because pairing those things with the fact that she was the closest thing he'd ever had to - to whatever they had going on, meant more than a one-night fuck; because pairing those things with the way she simply understood a glance, a grunt, or gesture from him was everything at times. And then, when her voice would grow soft, her eyes distant when she spoke of the world before it went to shit, before she'd been stuck under her husband's thumb; or when she'd raise both eyebrows at him and laugh in a way that made a heat sizzle under his skin...

Well, when they finally had their own little mishap, he could say he wasn't prepared for it.

The first thing he does - of course - is swallow and stare, for much longer than he should. His eyes follow the shadows and droplets of water that trace her form, from her hair to the small of her back and further down. His heart hammers, his palms sweat, and he has a moment of pure panic because - because why is this hitting him so hard, now, that she is so - so -

She's beautiful, he thinks, and Merle laughs away at the back of his mind.

Her voice comes to him, slightly husky, words murmured, and his throat tightens uncomfortably. That tune she hums is the same she'd shared with Sophia the first few weeks in the group, way back at the Atlanta camp. With it comes the rest of the memory: big blue eyes like her mother, filled with questions and things said that could turn someone's world upside down and then right-side up; the way Carol's fingers threaded through the little blonde's hair; the way her cheek pressed to the top of her head and nuzzled; how the two of them weathered the destructive, abusive force that was the man in their life with only each other to hold onto.

You should turn around, he tells himself. Go back the way you came, before she notices you, before you being here fucks everything up all over again. But he finds that he can't, or won't, or some combination of the two; he's frozen with a hammering heart and an awareness of himself and her that he realizes - too late - has been there for much longer than he'd want to admit aloud.

And that's when she turns around and sees him.

He doesn't know what to do at this point, seeing the shadow of her breasts, the smoothness of her stomach and the wiry, thin strength of her arms and thighs. He's struck, even more, by the expression on her face and the way her entire body freezes. Daryl can't tell if her eyes spell out fear or simple surprise or something else, but when she takes a step back regardless, her lips - good fucking lord, her lips, forming the shape of his name -

He forces a breath into his lungs, expelling it in a curse, and spins away on his heel. "You should really get some fucking clothes on," he spits, facing the hall as the sounds of her scrambling to put on said clothing float to him. With a hand half covering his eyes, he continues, "And what the hell are you doing in here alone? Thought Rick said to pair up while we're here."

"I don't need someone with me while I take a shower," she says, and he wants to groan, or laugh, or just fucking smirk, because there's that spine of hers, showing up again, in the worst of times. Any reaction to her words, though, is choked down when her hand touches his arm, and she comes into view at the corner of his eye. "Besides," she adds, leaving her hand there and tilting her head to meet his eyes, "I was only in there for a little bit, and I told Lori where I went."

Daryl bites his thumb, his gaze stubbornly trailing away from hers and to her still-wet hair, the single drop that trails down from hairline to temple, to cheek and chin, to finally drip onto her clothed collarbone. It's a struggle to hold back the itch of a shudder at the small of his back as he looks back at her.

"Shoulda had her come up with you," is all he says around his thumb. His lips twitch up when she raises her eyebrows at him, and then all semblance of amusement is wiped from him as her eyes look him up and down. He sees them go dark - for a second, if that - before she lifts her gaze back up.

"And where's T-Dog?" she asks. "Shouldn't he have come up with you?"

"He's comin'," Daryl huffs. He doesn't tell her that he'd come up to check on her after seeing her not among the group, and that T-Dog was still downstairs, not even planning to follow. He won't tell her that after seeing Lori but not her with the others he'd felt the need to just make sure she was fine. He won't mention how he still can't make heads or tails of that.

She smiles, and all over again he's hit with the fact - the fact, not the belief - that she is still making awareness skitter up and down his spine in a way that is both uncomfortable and not. That's she's still beautiful, maybe more so, with those lips and those eyes and the way she's so at ease around him.

"Anyway," she says, her hand brushing down his arm and then letting go, "I should go back downstairs. It's about time for dinner to be cooked, and I'm sure you came up here to get a shower yourself, right?"

A pause, and he nods, watching the natural sway of her hips as she goes down the hall and to the steps, disappearing down them a moment later. His hand is shaking when he slips in and closes the door, when he presses his back against it as the image of her comes back to him, pushed back by sheer luck and willpower only.

Daryl slides down to sit on the tile, knees pulled up as he's suddenly aware of the tightness in his jeans, the insistent throbbing, the heat and the wetness of precum -

"Shit," he says, taking in a trembling breath and biting his lip. Roughly, he runs both hands through his gritty hair, nails scraping along his scalp. His eyes clench tightly and he wishes that he had just fucking left when he'd seen her so bare and naked and - "_Fuck_."

Those eyes, that expression she'd had for that split second; she'd known. She'd noticed. _She'd fucking noticed._


	12. Shift

And then there were the quiet moments, spent when she isn't washing or cooking or learning how to aim or shoot a gun. Moments spent when you have no hunting to do, when another is on guard somewhere nearby, and the world is silent and still.

It's rare when these times come, your lives so full of preparation and protection and constant movement; when she will have the chance to doze, and you will sit against the side of the sofa — long after she has relaxed into slumber — and listen to the sound of her breathing slow and deep.

You will sometimes turn your head around its corner, to check if she hasn't disappeared; to see if her eyes have not opened, because the last thing you want is to have her see you there, in her dozing company. So quickly she has became a personification of — of peace, of those old days spent by the creak when you hunted near your home with your brother, listening to the water endlessly traveling over stone and tree root.

She's gotten under your skin — in her silence, the view of her wet eyes and sometimes shaky smile, in the way her fingers link together — and you don't know how to deal with that yet. It's hard enough to stay and enjoy the days when she will sit beside you, when, instead, all you want is to pace, to get up and leave, and to be away from this person who tips your world at an angle so fiercely that the rest of your perception struggles to catch up. You think you're becoming used to it, at least; but sometimes it gets to be too much, and you almost snap at the pressure more often than not.

But when she's sleeping, her cheek lined red with the wrinkles of the pillow and her deep rest; when she's sleeping, you can see the gradual shift of the world; the way things roll into your line of sight that never have before, the way they stay there as if nailed down, becoming more important than the things you once held in higher regard.

She's there somewhere, you know it: not quite at the center but maybe near the peripheral; part of the things you seem to see at the corner of your eye that are always there, waiting for you to notice them before you turn. And when you do — when you do, they are suddenly at the front of your attention, and you notice everything about them: from the gentle slump of her shoulders, to the grace and movements of her hands or her noiseless steps; the cautious habits formed in a life where everything that matters must be hidden or protected.

And then you notice the way she watches you in that exact same instant, and as you turn away, biting at the edges of your thumb, all you're left with is a warmth so subtle you're not really sure it's there. You think, maybe, that she's doing it on purpose — creating this inching shift of your perception; but as time passes, as the months draw on, you realize that she's just as caught as you are. Linked in an endless circle, watching and learning to adapt to a new life where you both can grow outside of the set boxes you'd both been put in.

It should disorient you more, the way you both are changing, but the adaptations are slow enough for you to process; measured in moments and the number of times you stop flinching when someone gets too close; measured in the number of times she speaks up rather than keep her silence. And as the changes become more noticeable, more locked within the habits of you both, you wonder for only a moment if it's worth it.

But when you watch her as she sleeps, in a beaten home while the others do their tasks and leave you both to rest, you decide that it's not a question of _maybe_.

It's a question of _how is it not_.


	13. Understand

As they prepare, she thinks she can feel him beside her. It's only a moment — a flash of heat close to her skin, like the brush of a ray of sunlight, the touch of a hand — but it's there, and at the corner of her eye she thinks that maybe she can see him, too. Awareness pricks at her, because how can he be here when she hasn't heard of him coming back?

Her own question is answered when she turns her head: he isn't back. It's just her, imagining and wanting her friend and feeling — feeling how she hasn't wanted to feel for a long time now. She dislikes the little twinge in the beat of her breast, the one that tells her that she already misses him. That the little things she looks for and looks after won't be there because the person who has made them has gone away.

She starts walking, looks down, looks away, and once again she can feel him, but it's more: it's his footsteps that she hears crunching the dirt beside her, the jingle of keys clipped to his belt loop, the rasp of his pants as he walks. She imagines, for a moment, that she can see him carrying his crossbow in his hand at her peripheral; the extension of himself that he hardly leaves behind.

But once again she remembers; he is gone. Gone with his brother, a man who reminded her of her late husband; a man that had pained and tormented and yet forced his brother to love him nonetheless, to think that without him he wasn't worthy of — of anything. Not worth enough to get to know; to stand on his own; to have a chance to do so. Not without _him._

A breath leaves her, and she paces the line of the fence again, just like he did; in the same manner, like a wild thing, stuck in the habit of walking their walls, the edges of their territory. The strap of the rifle burns with its weight over her shoulder, and she adjusts it, reminded yet again of him and his crossbow and the strength of his arms as he wielded it.

She knows why he left with his brother. Just thinking about it brings up similarities between her life and his: the relations they've had, with her husband and his brother too much the same and yet not; just enough to torment them in different ways. She hopes that he'll have the strength to come back; that he won't fall back into old circles and pathways when beyond the shack he'd lived in for years, there are giant trees and forests and possibilities; there is _this_ group, _this_ family, just waiting for him.

She understands his reasons, but understanding them, knowing what's behind them, doesn't bring much comfort; understanding them means that she can see the all-too-real possibility that he might not come back.

And after so long; after months spent learning and living and healing — after so long, having him not come back would just be one more person lost in her family again.

She knows that she'd heal, eventually, as they all would, but she also knows that he'd leave a scar that'd never fade. Just as her daughter did.

So she understands, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

—

**_Based off of a post on Tumblr._**


	14. Blanket

When he decides to move into one of the cells, she is there, waiting for him, a thick blanket over one arm. She stands, a figure in gentle patience with eyes that reflect this even more so, while leaning against the doorway as he unpacks his bag. He slips the poncho over the top bunk, props his crossbow against his bed near the floor, and throws his pillows against the back wall in a way he'll eventually get used to.

Once he's situated, fussing with the point of a bolt and watching her at the corner of his eye, that is when she moves to the foot of his bed. With a few calm gestures of her hands, she begins to spread the blanket out, and that is when he sees its pattern: flowers, small and close together, are all over the cloth, and the material is thicker than the grey blankets of the prison. It's familiar: like the awareness that lifts its head and yawns in his chest when she accidentally brushes her hand at his dirty boot.

"What's that for?" he asks her with a flick of the arrow in his hand, the whisper of its feathers loud to his ears over the sound of his heartbeat.

"It's for you," is her answer, and when he begins to gnaw at his thumbnail, she smiles lightly, eyes squinting. "You get cold at night. I thought you might need it."

He twitches his foot next to her hand, and her head tilts to meet his gaze. "It's your favorite," he reminds her, as if she could forget, and this time she ducks her head; and that is familiar, along with the way her hands begin to wring together, rustling the fabric.

"Because you gave it to me," she says and that yawning thing wrapped around his heart stretches out, leaving a tingle behind in his limbs. "But I have an extra blanket, and you get colder than I do, and I thought — I thought you'd might like to use it. You know," she glances at him, "if you need it."

They stare at each other, and it is a sign of how comfortable he feels with her — and how comfortable she is with _him_ — that neither of them feel the need to look away right at that moment. He sets the arrow down, gently, his arm and hand reaching out to grasp the blanket in a fist. He ruins all of her meticulous work, the insistence of smoothing out the wrinkles in the material, and pulls it closer to him, half in his lap.

Because she is right, and she is...generous, watchful, as always. When she is on watch he wouldn't be surprised if she'd noticed how he'd reacted to the cold out on his previous perch, how the scars at his back would ache with old pains, the memory of bruises that have faded with time, and with the new ones that form every day.

It wouldn't surprise him at all, if she knew all of this, because he'd noticed it in her: the way her joints would sometimes crack the colder she'd get, the way she'd struggle to put some warmth in her thin fingers, rubbing her palms and pushing them under her arms. It was why he gave her the blanket in the first place.

But she knows this, and she was obviously returning the favor.

Daryl meets her eyes; feels his expression soften in reaction to hers. She smiles: small, and with a quiet strength, while the awareness skitters across his skin to bask in the glow that squints her eyes. He can't help but return it, and is rewarded when that smile widens, and the beat in his chest roars in his ears like a drum.

"Thanks," he says, and the rest of the world grows quiet as an entire conversation passes in silence between them.

**Based off of a post on Tumblr.**


	15. This She Can Do

The knife is in her hand once again; her shadow cast over his prone, sleeping form on the bed. She still aches from the bruises; still hurts from the way he'd used her body; and her heart still beats in a hard rhythm against her ribcage, the fear and adrenaline and the cold numbness in her gut still gripping her deep inside.

This is the sixth time in two months.

He almost hit Sophia today.

Her thoughts feel disjointed, and she knows that this is the adrenaline talking, that flows in her system like a painful high. It is what makes her split lip tingle as the blood rushes to it, agitated by her teeth chewing on it. Her hand shakes as it lowers to Ed's thick neck, to the unshaven skin just under his jaw. He is a danger, she knows this. Feeling as though she is watching herself from the other side of the queen bed, she remembers her daughter's face as her husband's hand lifted.

If she had not been there to step in front of her little girl — if she hadn't been there to take the attention to herself, it is obvious what he would have done. His eyes had been following the little blonde like they had when they had first dated. It churned her stomach, put bile at the back of her throat.

If she hadn't been there...

The knife inched closer, and she feels resistance as it presses against his skin with his breath. Her palms sweat. She should end it. She should take her daughter away afterward and go.

But go where?

Her stomach wrenches, her breath hitches and stutters as sweat forms at her upper lip. She cannot go back to her mother and father; her father, who Ed reminds her of, who had set up the standard she'd placed for herself because she hadn't known much different.

She knows different now, and she can't go back to bring her daughter there.

Her name is not on the bank accounts; she has no access to money, no access to anything because her husband took everything from her when they married — slowly, over time, with the proverbial blade at her throat as her own is at Ed's. And if she were tried, found guilty, put into prison? What would happen to her daughter?

The knife wavers, and lifts away.

She can't do it; she can't kill him.

But she can step in front of her daughter when her husband turns into a monster again. She can handle the blows and thrusts and the crack of bone and ribs. She can handle the aches and pains, the scratches: all for her daughter, because her little girl is still so young, and she deserves better than what Carol had gotten all her life.

She puts the knife away in the drawer on her side of the bed, and breathes out as she settles on the bed, ignoring the grunts of her husband in his sleep.

She can do this, at least, to protect her little girl.


	16. It Is

And it is disbelief and shock and pain, in the form of eyes glazed and bloodied; of red flesh hanging from chewing lips that'd sneered for most of a life, that spewed insults and blunt truths and lies and closed-mouthed silence. It is a shared history spent in an old house with a man who loomed over like a shadow, and a woman who burned to dust and left nothing behind.

It is pushing away a devastated, chipped face that looks like your brother, and a lost chance to have a family, newly found, and a family already bonded in blood, finally come together. It is seeing nothing in those eyes that you know like the back end of a hunting trail; seeing a thing of greedy hunger and a lunging form, ready to not just kill you but eat you alive.

It is knowing that you have to do this, and a brief sense of anger, as you plunge your knife into a skull already softened by disease to end the thing living inside. It is being stunned and furious as you do so four more times, to destroy the face that is already branded in your mind's eye; to let your body do something against the scream that is building up in a choked throat. It is collapsing on your back when you are done; when everything shatters all over again at what you've had to do.

It is tears that travel over your cracked sense of self, the tentative hopes left incomplete. It is knowing that even while you lie here the rest of your family is waiting for your return; but it is also feeling that maybe there really isn't a point to it all, when your oldest line of sanity had to be ended by your own hand.

Yet, it is knowing that you have to get up anyway. It is knowing that you will.

Eventually.


	17. Wordless

She doesn't go into her cell. Instead she finds herself remembering the grasp of his fingers in hers earlier that day, the look in his eyes as their grip slipped away; he didn't have to hold her hand but he did and she remembers that as she travels with fingertips tapping empty cell bars toward him.

This is a tomb, he'd said, but to her it's a tomb that'd just became a little more of a home, and one she'd gladly continue living in as long as he and the others were around.

It's the dead of night; pitch black darkness reaching out with long shadows illuminated by silver moonlight; it's the dead of night when she reaches the opening of his personal cage to find that he's already awake. That instead of sleeping he is sitting as he was that conversation ago, twiddling with a bolt's feathers.

His eyes are blue-bright, and steady, and inside she trembles a little. He doesn't ask why she's here; maybe he knows that the answer escapes her faster than the questions; maybe he doesn't want to voice it. Voicing things, saying them out loud even when there's only the two of them around, has never been part of what's between them. Not really. Not usually.

She sits beside him on the bed, the empty space left for her where his legs have curled closer to his body. The covers are at the foot of the prisoner bed and seeing them sends a little bit of a thrill into her tonight; a delicate pattern of flowers peeks from the plain grey, and she smiles because it is her favorite blanket because he'd given it to her, and she wonders if he holds it in just as much regard as she'd given it back for the cold nights he can't sleep, hunter that he is.

Whether it's him or her that makes the first move, neither of them know, but it starts with hands linked together and an awkward but heartfelt kiss; their shuttering breathes hot between them as their eyes meet because they are both unsure. How long has it been?

But she slips her hands under his shirt and touches the scars there and his trembling hand shakes underneath her own to the small of her back, and together they lift each other's shirts. They hold whatever-this-is in their eyes and reconnect when the clothing is discarded; when he is the one who slides each bra strap off her shoulder and fumbles at the back hooks, hissing between his teeth when pale breasts are revealed. Under his gaze she feels beautiful and nervous yet never afraid, though panic has been splashed over her like the morning's first sunlight.

His hands are clumsy; rough working hands spent holding combat knives and pulling triggers and his shoulders are set strong. Her hands are drawn to them, her palms smoothing scars under her lifelines and absorbing the way his breath falters in his chest at her touch.

They are wordless. The sound of the fabric of their clothing being pushed off the side of the bed is nothing compared to the way their breathing matches and their blood heats. He touches smooth skin and a body that has grown too used to small meals and eight months of slow starvation, and the look on his face is full of fear and will she break if I am too rough?

She rubs at his cheek with a hand, and her eyes provide no answer because maybe she doesn't know one; instead they reflect his own — will he break if she is not careful, and when they read their expressions they both take a breath as one being. Her legs brace on either side of him and she can feel him, his skin hot and only semi-hard. They kiss, and touch, because if they are going to do this they have to know each other; because that is who they are — two people who have bit by bit connected each others threads with shades that almost match.

When his fingers slide between wet folds and hers trace over collarbones and pectorals and up over his shoulders, she feels his other hand run over a thigh, and him, hot and hard where she shifts. She swallows his gasp between her lips and absorbs the tensing energy of his body when she grasps him in her hand and takes him inside her. With his hands twitching at her hips and her arms cradling him at the shoulders, they become a collection of sounds and gasps, and the wet, sweaty slap of skin on skin becomes more than that of sex but a connection that acts like a live wire transmitted in their gazes.

And when both of them are tensing and shaking and their breaths rasps hotly across each other's faces, so close they are, she takes his hand and leads it down to touch at the bundle of nerves covered by pubic hair, and he rubs and flicks at it, watching her face as it twists.

It's as she shudders his name that he comes undone, too, and in silence he trembles underneath her, accepting her slight weight on top of him and her breathing brushing against his jaw. They doze together as they regain their wits and separate their sense of selves from each other; soon she finds herself with her back pressed against the cold concrete wall and welcoming it's cool stone against her sweaty skin. He is burrowed close to her and as she begins a habit of brushing his wet hair from his face she sees his eyes flicker open, and the blue gaze meets hers under dark eyelashes.

She kisses him, and he kisses back with a sloppy, inexperienced technique that matches her own; despite this, or perhaps because of it, there is more to it than a symbol of affection.

They do not say _I love you_ as, together, their vision fades to sleep. They do not need to. They are more than declarations and fancy words because she has been fooled once by them, and he's known enough of the world to not let himself be hurt though he has never known what's been missing.

But their hands are grasped tight and their fingers are linked even tighter between them; and this time they are not walking away from one another. This time they are staying right where they are.


End file.
